We are the worlds leading professional Leaf Cutting Ant exhibit installer.
Whether you are looking for a home study set up or a major display for a zoo or Theme Park, this is the place you need to be. Andrew Stephenson heads up a team of zoologists who will take your requirements and build the perfect display for you. We have worked on Leaf Cuttng Ant displays in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, Italy and countless other locations. We have installed Leaf Cutting Ants in public toilets (Twycross Zoo, lower roght picture) and we have build an entire studio set for the BBC for their documentary 'Planet Ants'.
Recently we have installed a colony of ants into a Marketing Company in central London and we supply around 300 colonies of ants per year to Zoos and other clients around the world.
The biggest advantage we have, as well as being the leading authorities on Leaf Cutting Ant husbandry, is that we have an inhouse team who can take our design and create the finished display in any setting, anywhere in the world.
Leaf Cutting Ants are perfect for:-

Corporate Identity at exhibitions where unusual signage using ants can attract more people to your message.

Focal attraction at a Butterfly House or invertebrate based tourist attraction

Incorporating into an existing Exotic Animal exhibit such as a Tropical House or a Reptile and Amphibian department.

In Museums having a live exhibit can bring everything to Life. Our ants are in The Natural History Museum in London and the National Museum of Scotland. We were the only live exhibit in the Millenium Dome 15 years ago.

In Schools. We have a lot of colonies currently set up in schools around the country. They are the perfect teaching aid for many aspects of the Science course and also provide an invaluable research tool for advanced Biology projects.

Private Hobbyists. Perhaps the most satisfying feedback we get is from people who buy a colony of ants and, sometimes , a setup, and then let us know how their colony is coming on. Lots of people with an interest in Snakes or Spiders and other exotics develop an interest in the type of ants. Once they have them they realise that, unlike the other animals they keep, there is never a time when they look at their colony and do not see activity. The ants are either gathering leaves, attending to house keeping duties, feeding the queen or making fungus, but normally they are doing all of these. It is an argument I have had with many spider enthusiasts that, once you have kept Leaf Cutting Ants, having a pet that moves once a year just wont do it for you any more.

We have set up two Leaf Cutting Ant colonies in Land Based Colleges, one as a teaching aid in an invertebrate section and the other in the Foyer as an out and out attraction.

In other words there is really no place where Leaf Cutting Ants will not have the impact you would want on visitors to your establishment or your home.

There are some decisions you need to make about your display of Leaf Cutting Ants.

Is your colony for Public Display or provate small scale study. If you want ants for your own enjoyment or for a behind the scenes area then choose Acromyrmex species. In this case you should buy our most basic tank, a picture of which is shown on this page, top right. There is an excellent guide on how to set this exact tank up on this page, you should take a look. If it is for Public display then we are talking Atta.

Next, do you want the display to show good activity from day 1. This is important because if you are happy to wait a few months for a good foraging line to be established then it is fine to buy a small colony, otherwise you should buy big!

3. Now you need to decide on the big issues. There are two types of enclosure you can have. Type 1 is where the ants nest area and the ants walkway leading to the feeding table are all contained within the one unit. There are examples of this type of display on this page. The ants will have an area, typically filled with a substrate of some kind,, into which they will burrow and form their gardens. (We recommend having some form of soil as the nesting material because in colonies where there is no soil it is much more sdifficult to maintain humidity and an even temperature. Also the nest substrate acts as a buffer against changing conditions and protects the fungus, especially at the beginning when the colony is young and small) A rope is then coiled back and forth within the space above the nest and food platform until it eventually reaches the feeding table. Because this enclosure is contained within one display case it is easy to illustrate the entire process the ants are going through and make sense of the processing of food and how the ants achieve their producion line approach to growth of the colony. The other option is where the nest tank is situated in one part of the display and the feeding platform is in the other. Now we are able to get really creative and run the pipe or rope around the outside of the exhibition for a distance of up to 50m. Deciding on rope or pipe is a choice you should think about. Overhead rope is fine in a Butterfly House where the visitors are immersed in the experience and are seeing realistic rainforest conditions and are able to interact with Butterflies and other animals without seeing them through glass or bars. We use clear acrylic pipe where the walkway is down lower, where visitors may grab or try to climb onto the walkway. You can then decide where you want the feeding table. In Sweden we set up a display where the Feeding Table was at the reception, in the counter where the public paid for their admission to the Tropical Centre. Or you can take the walkway through the outside of your exhibits and even through each individual display. The visitors will spend a great deal more time looking at each display when they are spending 20 minutes following a particular ant from the feeding table back to the nest.

A Display of Tropical Leaf Cutting Ants is a stunning attraction and a great addition to your exhibits. We can offer you the following services as well as the above.

Advice on an existing set up.

Requeening an old colony where the queen has died.

Rehoming a colony that has outgrown its original housing.

Advice on colony decline and issues relating to management of the ants.

Staff training in all aspects of Leaf Cutting Ant husbandry

Educational and Interpretative material for display and tours.

Take a look at the other sevices we offer. We can prepare a presentation for you including plans drawn and a model of the installation to give investors or senior management a better idea of what the finished display will look like. We can supply plants from our online store which are collected from the rainforest. Some of these are unique to us. If you want to see where the ants and the plants come from then come with us. The trinidad Expedition page will cover how you can explore the Rainforest on one of our bug hunts in Trinidad.